A few thoughts as I continue to work on the kits (I will add more later when I’m finished)

Even with the complete lack of paint guides (box art *IS NOT* a good guide) or suggested colors for those more advanced modelers out there, I do suggest this kit to everyone.

The Oberth class is a nice addition to the “hero” ships that have been offered in the past, it is good that our styrene fleets can be expanded. And the Oberth has many sub classes that resin add-ons can be made for.

The Klingon Bird of Prey, while it has been done before in a similar scale, this kit it nicely detailed and much better than its smaller predecessor. I do hope for more Klingon ships in the future – a styrene Negh'var would be great (personal dream in styrene)

I do recommend that this kit need to be part of your stash – you need at least 1 (or 5 IMHO) for future kits… I’ll defiantly be getting at least 2 more before the wife notices.

This kit(s) is REALLY hindered by the complete lack of a proper paint & decaling layout, the box art just does NOT cut it - having to spin the box around looking for what goes where is a pain... and that for people that keep the boxes, normally I would just toss the box to save space.

The decals have gone back to the brittleness of old - several breaking and other falling apart as they are just prepped.

Some things that several of the old timers would have no problem fixing, but would really detract from a new modeler.

There are errors in the build sheet, wrong number on parts, and missing decals (let alone brittle ones)

But any of us experienced Trek modeler could almost build these kits blindfolded (meant in a good way)

Keep an eye out for my last final thoughts as I hopefully get these finished tomorrow

As it happens I just picked up the 1/1000 scale Defiant, and holy crap that's a beautiful little model! It's just a little smaller than my Alliance Models resin Defiant, but since it's lightable, I'm going to have a blast with it! The Grissom is next on the purchase list.

Have them both all finished up
- unfortunately the pictures I took yesterday were accidentally deleted by a rambunctious 18-month old that decided to play on dad's computer and started smashing buttons while dad was in the bathroom

Overall these kits are nice - good to build, detail where it should be (some missing, but understandable at this scale), and pleasantly fun to build

The shortcomings on the instruction sheet do hurt the fun building, and do make some detailing parts of it frustrating

The Oberth went together well - and is straight forward on the painting.

The Klingon is super detailed, and fun to build (but they all are, aren't they?) but as for the detail painting on the Klingon Bird of Prey I do suggest downloading the bigger cousins instruction sheet (if you don't already have that sheet in your stash)

So how did you feel about the decals? I know you said you ripped a few of them and I noticed you didn't seem to use the ones that go along the edges of the pylons which I felt were to thin so I thickened mine.